Kingston dentist indicted for insurance fraud

KINGSTON >> A city dentist was arraigned Wednesday on a multi-count indictment charging him with insurance fraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records related to a February 2014 fire at a building he owned adjacent to his office.

Gilberto A. Nunez, 47, of Henry Street, Poughkeepsie, was arraigned by Judge Donald A. Williams in Ulster County Court on a seven-count indictment handed up Tuesday by an Ulster County grand jury. Nunez is charged with five felony counts of falsifying business records and the felonies of grand larceny and insurance fraud in connection with an allegedly fraudulent $8,400 insurance claim related to the fire at 381 Washington Ave.

Nunez is not accused of setting the fire.

The fire was next door to Nunez’s dental office at 389 Washington Ave., and the burned building has since been demolished. Nunez still owns the property and continues to practice dentistry next door.

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Nunez’s attorney, Evan L. Lipton of New York City, said the amount cited in the indictment represents “a tiny fraction” of an otherwise undisputed insurance claim for the building that burned. He did not provide the total amount of Nunez’s claim.

Lipton said his client was “released immediately from court” Wednesday after posting $15,000 bail and was “never handcuffed and never arrested.”

“My client maintains he did absolutely nothing wrong. We will be fighting these charges and he expects to be exonerated,” Lipton said.

The indictment alleges that “on or about June 6, 2014,” Nunez stole $8,400 from the Preferred Mutual Insurance Co. “based on several fraudulent insurance acts,” Kingston police said in a press release.

The investigation was conducted by Kingston police, town of Ulster police and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, which is acting as special prosecutor in the case.

Senior investigator Chris Borek of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said the prosecution will be handled by Assistant District Attorney Mary Ellen Albanese. Borek declined to discuss the case further.

The fire, on Feb. 20, 2014, heavily damaged a building that formerly housed a chiropractic office. No one was in the building at the time of the fire and there were no reports of injuries.

The two-story building had a vacant apartment on the second floor and was being renovated, fire officials said at the time.

On Wednesday, Kingston Deputy Fire Chief Tom Chase said the cause of the fire remains undetermined.

About the Author

Diane Pineiro-Zucker has been a reporter at the Daily Freeman since April 2013.
Pineiro-Zucker worked as a reporter in the Freeman’s Rhinebeck bureau in the early 1980s, left to become executive editor at Taconic Newspapers in Dutchess County, and returned to the Freeman in 2010 as a copy editor. Reach the author at dpzucker@freemanonline.com
or follow Diane on Twitter: @DianeAtFreeman.